A Certain Madman With A Box
by DrummondType2
Summary: The Doctor's oldest and deadliest foes gather in Academy City, while an unfortunate accident draws the Doctor to investigate.


A Certain Madman with a Box  
by  
DrummondType2

Disclaimer: Doctor Who and A Certain Scientific Railgun/Magical Index are the property of their respective copyright holders.

Chapter One

Shizuri Mugino woke to pain and darkness. She couldn't move. She could barely think.  
"Where am I?" she croaked hoarsely, trying to look around, and finding herself unable to do so.  
"You are in my care," a voice, electronically filtered, spoke to her from the darkness, "You received serious damage from your powers, and were on the verge of death."  
She remembered her left arm's destruction, and could feel a deep throbbing agony where her right eye should be.  
"Who are you?" she asked, not sure if she should offer her gratitude for her life being saved, or lash out with her powers to punish them for preserving her in what surely must be a state of freakish disfigurement.  
"A friend," the voice said with reassuring tones.  
"Don't be so fucking cryptic," She spat, that irritating throb in her head now made even worse by her rising anger, "Tell me your name, Damnit!"  
"You'll hurt yourself again if you keep that up," the voice said, "I'm not all that different from you, my dear. I, too, have been left badly injured by my enemies."  
The lights in the room rose gently, and she saw a man sitting in a chair. His skin was a sickly grey pallor, his eyes seemingly fused shut. A blue light emanated from a device fixed to the center of his bald head. He appeared to also be missing his left arm.  
"My name is Davros," he rasped, "And I believe, my dear, that we can help one another."  
He pressed a switch on his chair with a mechanical right hand, and Shizuri felt the pain that racked her body diminish as powerful drugs coursed into her system, making her drowsy.  
"God, I hope I don't look anything like you," She managed to exhale before drifting back into the merciful escape of unconsciousness.  
Davros managed the faintest of smiles, "Don't worry. I will tend to your injuries, and then you can see The Doctor."

*******

Kuroko Shirai stared at the computer screen in front of her with a mixture of concern and frustration.  
"What is it, Shirai?" Konori Mii asked, peering over her shoulder.  
"These are all the reports of missing persons sent to us by Anti-Skill from the last few months. There's been a sudden surge of people vanishing, mostly from these three adjoining districts. But..."  
"But?"  
"I can't isolate a pattern or profile. See. If these were kidnappings, I would expect to see a coherent profile. A sexual predator would have a specified type. But the missing people are of both genders, and across a wide age-range. If it were gang activity, we would expect to see injured victims or deceased casualties show up. And if it were something to do with esper powers, I'd expect to see a profile of similar ranked individuals disappear. But, there are people from across the power spectrum, including level 5 esper Shizuri Mugino, power known as Meltdowner. So the best I can come up with is that aliens from Mars have eaten them all."  
Konori smirked at Kuroko's bad joke, "Don't give up, Kuroko. If there's a pattern there, you'll see it. You always do."  
"I'm going to check the area involved," Kuroko exhaled, "Maybe I'll get lucky and find a witness or two who can give us a clue why people seem to be vanishing from Academy City without a trace."  
Kuroko stepped outside of the office, and teleported.  
Only to materialize far short of her goal, ten feet above the ground. She had the good fortune to land in the grassy fields of a public park, rather than striking the reinforced concrete pavement. She was unconscious, even as Konori, who'd witnessed her mishap, ran to her side.  
"Shirai? Shirai? Are you alright?"  
There was no answer, and Konori was on her phone in an instant, calling for an ambulance.

********

Aboard the TARDIS, the deep thrumming resonance of the Cloister Bell echoed throughout the control room.  
"Now what, Doctor?" Rory sighed in exasperation.  
"We've had a collision?"  
"We're still in the Time Vortex," Amy said, "What could have collided with the TARDIS? We didn't bump into ourselves going the other way, did we?"  
"No, no, that's prevented by the contrafibulator. No, we collided with something else moving in eleventh dimensional space. But...given our coordinates when the impact occurred..."  
"Doctor, do we have to worry about the ship blowing up? Again?" Rory put his hands on his hips.  
"No. No damage to the outer shell. In fact, the collision was here, in the TARDIS interior. That shouldn't be possible. It didn't even have much mass, whatever it was. Only about 90 pounds. No larger than a...oh dear."  
"What? Doctor, what is it?"  
"Amy, the monitor, what were our exact coordinates when the Cloister Bell first sounded?"  
"Uh...If I'm reading this right, 1845 slash triple zed, acorn."  
"Oh, this is bad. This is very, very bad. I never bring the TARDIS anywhere NEAR here if it can be avoided. We need to land. Right away."  
The TARDIS lurched and shuddered as The Doctor pulled levers, turned switches, and pressed buttons with a frantic energy.  
"Doctor, what is it?"  
There was a sharp thud, and the TARDIS had landed. The Doctor flung open the doors.  
"This is Academy City. This is humanity's future. The not too distant future, in fact. And this is a place I try to avoid.  
"This is an autonomous city-state on the island of Japan, and it's perhaps one of the most dangerous temporal tipping points in your whole history, aside from the Kennedy Assassination."  
"What are we looking for?" Amy looked around as Rory shut the doors behind them.  
An ambulance went racing past them, sirens blaring.  
"That!" The Doctor said, "They're either taking someone to the hospital, or going to collect them. We need to find out which it is."  
He motioned to a passerby and pulled out his wallet with the psychic paper, "Excuse me, Special Investigations. Can you tell me, was someone hurt around here? The report was a bit fuzzy."  
"I think a Judgement Officer was hurt. They said she was a teleporter, but that she fell out of the sky for some reason."  
"I see. Thank you. Alright, you three, then we're on our way to the hospital. We're bound to cross paths with our patient there."  
"Doctor, what do they mean, a teleporter? Someone using a transmat pad?" Rory asked.  
"No, still too early for transmat. No, this city exists for one purpose and one purpose only. The development of ESPer powers in children. Children are assigned ranks based on their level of power and its potential applications, from zero, meaning no power at all, to Level 5, being far more powerful than most people really deserve.  
"For a human being to be a teleporting ESPer, they'd have to travel in eleventh dimensional space."  
Rory nodded, "Meaning that they travel in the same places that the TARDIS does, and that they got a right proper whacker from the main console."  
"Indeed. We have to check and make sure there was no permanent damage, and then get the Old Girl out of this place before anything else can go wrong."  
"And if we manage all of that without a hitch, we can stop at Vegas next," Amy smirked, "'Cause we'll be on quite the winning streak, Doctor."  
"Don't tempt the fates, Pond. Just come along. We've got to stop at the hospital."

********

Mikoto Misaka rushed into the hospital, "Konori, what happened? Is Kuroko alright?"  
"They're examining her now, Misaka," Konori exhaled, "She just...it was like she hit a brick wall. And then she kept muttering the same thing to herself, over and over again."  
"What?"  
"'_The Doctor's oldest foes_.' I don't even know what that means, but when that frog-faced doctor heard it, he seemed pretty upset. He told his staff that a foreign specialist would be coming soon, and that they were to give him immediate clearance to see Shirai."  
"Can we see here?"  
"I don't see why not," the familiar voice of the "frog-faced doctor" came from behind them, "She's not in any immediate danger, and there's no need for surgery. She'll be unresponsive, though. Come on. Her room is this way."  
They followed him to a room at the end of the hall, where Kuroko was lying in bed, hooked up to an EEG, which beeped steadily.  
"Hey, Kuroko? Can you hear me?" Mikoto spoke up.  
The monitor continued to beep steadily.  
"Hey, come on. Wake up. I'll even let you get in one free grope if you wake up now."  
Nothing.  
"What's wrong with her?"  
"I've got some ideas, but I won't know for sure until the specialist gets here. If we didn't have her on a powerful sedative, she'd still be going on about foes and such."  
Just then, a lanky man in a bow tie burst into the room, holding up a wallet, "I'm here. The Doctor is...here."  
He trailed off as he saw the "frog faced doctor".  
"Heaven Canceller. I thought you..."  
"No. I wasn't there at the time. The Council decided it would be best if I stayed away altogether."  
"Who are you?" Mikoto raised an eyebrow.  
"The Doctor. Here are my credentials," he held up the wallet.  
"All I see is a blank piece of paper," Mikoto's eyes narrowed suspiciously.  
"She's an Electro-Master," Heaven Canceller told The Doctor, "Immune to psychics, including your psychic paper."  
"Psychic paper," Konori raised an eyebrow, "Is that something they're working on?"  
"Long story. No time. This girl, what is her ability and level?"  
"She's a Level 4 teleporter," Mikoto answered, "And that still doesn't tell us who you are?'  
"Me? I'm the man who's going to save your girlfriend, if you stop interrupting."  
"SHE IS NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!" Mikoto shouted, "And you better start explaining!"  
The Doctor didn't back down, "Her power, she uses eleventh dimensional data calculations to plot her spatial jumps, yes?"  
"Yes."  
"You might as well tell her, Doctor. It's going to be a long night if you don't." Heaven Canceller sighed.  
"Fine," The Doctor threw up his arms, "I'm an alien from a planet that doesn't exist anymore. I have two hearts, if you care to check it out with a stethoscope later on. I'm a time-traveler, and I'm over 1200 years old. And I'm the best medicine your friend can get, seeing as how she had a head on collision with my time machine!  
"Any other questions, before you delay the treatment?"  
"Are you for real?" Mikoto began sizzling with angry electricity. This guy was more annoying than the twerp with the special hand.  
"He is," Heaven Canceller said, "I'm from the same planet. Although, while The Doctor went into a voluntary exile, I was more encouraged to leave."  
"For good reason," The Doctor glared, "Your experiments were..."  
"Much more sane than what you do," Heaven Canceller sighed, "I'm not here to fight with you. I'm here to help this girl. And so, I assume, are you."  
"Yes. She's got a tiny sliver of the TARDIS consciousness in her head. I know it's a tiny sliver, because if it were more, she'd have burned out by now. Easy remedy."  
The Doctor pulled the TARDIS key from his pocket, "Haven't done this in a bit."  
He set the key in Kuroko's hand, and there was a sudden metal on metal thrumming and wheezing, VWORP VWORP  
Mikoto gasped in awe as the room around them began to fade, and a strange new room seemed to materialize around them.  
"Wh...where are we?"  
"Same place as we were. I just got the TARDIS to materialize around us. Since the key was in your friend's hand when it was summoned, it should act as a conduit for the TARDIS to reclaim her sliver, and your friend should be waking up right about..."  
"OW! My head!"  
"There it is."  
"Doctor, before you rush off, there's something you should know," Heaven Canceller pulled him aside.  
"Kuroko, you feeling alright?"  
"No, Onee-sama! I feel awful. It's like I cracked my head on a lamppost or something. But I remember you saying something about a free grope?"  
"I...I...uh, don't know what you're talking about."  
"Oh, come on, Onee-sama, lying is beneath you," Kuroko began making twitchy, groping motions with her hands, and there was an unhealthy gleam in her eye. She teleported out of bed and around Mikoto's trunk, her hands grabbing at the electro-master's modest chest.  
There was a sudden arcing of electricity, and Kuroko was suddenly twitching on the floor.  
"Glad to see you're feeling better," Mikoto said sourly.  
"I thought you said she wasn't your girlfriend," The Doctor raised an eyebrow.  
"She's not. But try telling her that."  
Amy and Rory poked their heads into the TARDIS, "Sorry we're late, Doctor. Had to ditch the nurses. Apparently, we weren't expected with you."  
Heaven Canceller raised a disapproving eyebrow, "You're still traveling with people who you just pick up? How many of them are you going to get into your messes before you learn better. It's not fair to them."  
"They all come willingly," The Doctor said, "Well, except for the first couple. And that gobby Austrailian."  
"Amy, Rory, we have a problem. If what my...colleague here is telling me is correct, and I'm afraid it probably is, we're not going to be making that trip to Vegas after all."


End file.
